


The Fujiwhara Effect

by Nymm_at_Night



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Angst, BAMF Jeremy, Canon Compliant, Emotional Manipulation, Friendship, Gaslighting, Gen, Hearing Voices, Impermanence, It's not an eating disorder, Jeremy Heere's somewhat worrying relationship to food, My take on "SQUIP redemption", Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Post-Canon, Post-Squip, Weather metaphors, but uh, watch out!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 04:32:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nymm_at_Night/pseuds/Nymm_at_Night
Summary: Jeremy Heere has always been excellent at reading the air, especially when there's a storm brewing.





	The Fujiwhara Effect

Jeremy has always thought phrase “the calm before the storm” was dumb. Storms didn’t just happen, not if you kept an eye out for them. The air pressure would drop, the clouds would turn grey and heavy, and the wind would taste of ozone and thunder. Only people who weren’t looking for the signs would miss them.

That’s why when Jeremy wakes up on a crisp Sunday morning in March to a silent bedroom and a silent head, he takes note, even if he’s still half asleep. There’s no hissing voice in his ears, telling him to pull on the v-neck with the itchy seams, urging him to perform appearance checks or jump out his window, no gentle hum of mom and dad downstairs, making coffee and watching the news.

Just silence.

It’s fucked up that that’s what sets him on edge these days. He’s almost forgotten what it was like to wake up to a silent house, pad quietly through the halls so she wouldn’t know he was awake, grab his toothbrush and a cup of water from the bathroom and creep back to bed, pulling the door shut ever so slowly. He shivers when the hinges squeak, and he sticks his tongue between his teeth to keep them from chattering with nerves.

Sighing, he puts the glass and the toothbrush on the desk. He’s still groggy as he digs a granola bar out of the drawer and chews it quietly, taking slow sips from the glass. The box is running out. He’ll have to ask Michael to take him by the supermarket today, but first he’s got to make it to ten o’clock, when Mom leaves and—

Oh.

Mom.

Shame wells up and he sets down the granola bar. It’s suddenly unfathomably bitter. After a moment of staring at his empty glass, he trades it for his phone and flicks down to Michael’s name on speed dial. The ring tone goes once, twice, a third time, and Jeremy wonders for a moment if Michael is sleeping in today, but then on the fourth buzz—

“Yo Jer, how’s it hanging?”

Jeremy smiles and slides off the desk, padding over to the big aloe plant on the window sill. Idly, he plays with the leaves. “Eh, okay. You?”

“Pretty good! I saw this gnarly documentary about absolute zero on Netflix last night, and it was fucking awesome! Did you know that if you like, freeze helium it turns into a liquid with no viscosity?”

Jeremy smiles. He can hear Michael’s grin over the phone line. “Uh, no? That sounds cool though.”

There's a pause over the line. “Hey, are you okay man? You sound... off.”

“I’m fine, it’s just,” Jeremy’s eyes drop to his abandoned breakfast on the table, and he thinks about the bag of beef jerky shoved between the slats of his bed and the mattress, still there from before. “Weird morning.”

“Okay...” Michael says, stretching the A into a bad impression of the Fonz. “But seriously, dude, you need anything?”

Jeremy looks around his room, mostly bare save for a few knick knacks and poster, like new growth after a forest fire. It’s deathly quiet. “I just... need to get out of the house. Can you come by in a few?”

“Sure, meet me in five dude.”

Jeremy nods, even if Michael can’t see it, and hangs up. He grabs one of the shirts Christine bought him for Hanukkah out of the closet, and pulls it on, thumbing the soft fabric for a moment. He grabs a pair of old jeans with worn out knees too, and yanks them on, not bothering with a belt, and slips down the stairs, silent as a ghost.

There’s a note on the fridge, in his dad’s messy scrawl, something about being out shopping and “Sleep in private!”, and Jeremy squeezes in a “At Michael’s” on the bottom of the page, then runs out the door, barely pausing to lock it.

There’s a blaring noise, and Jeremy nearly jumps out of his skin. He turns around, hair standing on end like a dumb porcupine, and Michael’s there, leaning halfway out the window of his PT Cruiser, drumming his fingers on the lovingly duct taped door. “Hey man!”

Jeremy slides into the worn out shotgun seat, cranking up the heat. “Hey, so, uh, what do you want to do?”

Michael shrugs, humming a little bit as he pulls out onto the main road. “Eh, I kinda figured you’d pick. You kinda look like you need it.”

Jeremy glances at him, and Michaels smiles a little sadly. “Bad head day?”

“No, it’s... they’re quiet today,” Jeremy says, tracing the seams in the leather, because the fact that he’s talking about the honest to god voices in his head that may or may not be a dead robot will never not be weird. “Haven’t said anything all morning.”

“Huh. Well that’s good. Have you had breakfast yet?”

Jeremy almost says yes, but then he remembers that most people, or at least Michael, don’t count a single year old granola bar as breakfast. “Nope. Do you wanna go by Dunkin’?”

“Aww man, I was feeling Seven Eleven.”

“Michael Mell, we are not eating breakfast at a Seven Eleven,” Jeremy says, folding his arms. “Seven Eleven is for _dinner,_ okay?”

“Fine, you heathen, but you’re going to have to hear about superfluids for the next hour.”

“Okay, okay, god,” Jeremy groans, smiling a little too much, because the disagreement feels _right._ It’s been longer than either of them will admit— months, years?— since they were perfect copies of each other, two pallete swaps with the same interests and no differences except for who got the first controller. There was a time when Jeremy was able to tell Michael anything, and have him understand it all, but that’s long gone. Maybe it was when he took the SQUIP, or signed up for the play without Michael, or when Mom left, or when she started yell at Dad and him or some other earlier division, but just like Mario and Luigi, they’ve grown apart.

It’s good though, seeing Michael go on about some niche science thing Jeremy doesn’t really care about, and not feeling bad when he doesn’t understand.

Dunkin’ Donuts is only half full, but the fake fireplace is on, gas flames licking the ceramic logs. The line is blissfully short, and after a moment of looking over the donuts, Jeremy realizes there’s no presence looming over his shoulder. The SQUIP is still silent, not running through statistics on how eating something with that much saturated fat will make him an obese slob.

Jeremy can taste ozone as he orders a peanut butter and oreo donut, but he grins under the thunderhead all the same.

Michael returns his smile and settles into an armchair by the fire, and Jeremy takes the one next to him. “See, Seven Eleven doesn’t have a fireplace.”

Michael scoffs and idly pulls a piece off of his cinnamon bun, unrolling it like a Fruit by the Foot made of pastry. “It’s got a hot dog twirler, and that’s pretty much the same thing.”

Jeremy laughs, sips the soda mom always said would rot his brain, and squashes another piece of donut into his mouth. It’s high calorie, which is a small comfort he missed during the SQUIP since apparently bread makes you fat. Jeremy’s always liked the simplicity of something that can fill you up for the whole day, simple and clean, with no hunger pangs. “So, what’re we doing today?”

Michael shrugs. “I figured we’d just hang out? Braid each other’s hair, paint each other’s nails—” He bats his eyelashes obnoxiously “—Talk about booooys.”

Jeremy snorts. “Michael Mell, the last time you tried anything involving nail polish, we had to go to Ikea and buy a rug so your parents wouldn’t notice the stains.”

“I’ll have you know that Rugamuffin is a valued member of the family, Jeremiah.”

Jeremy can’t think of a good retort, so he just sticks out his tongue at Michael. “Nerd.”

“Geek.”

When he had the SQUIP, and honestly before that, Jeremy had forgotten how good it was being around Michael. There’s things he doesn’t understand, no matter how hard he tries, but Jeremy doesn’t need a universal confidant, not any more. Besides, Rich might know what it’s like to be SQUIPed, and Jake may understand that heavy feeling that curls in his chest like a raincloud when he looks out at the audience and doesn’t see her there, but they’re not Michael. They don’t have that easy grace to the barbs and jabs they trade, like a performance they’ve both learned the choreography to.

Jeremy doesn’t try to make today anything more than that dance, avoids burdening it with the sinking sensation in his gut. They banter in the car over some new indie game, pull into a parking lot to catch a high level Clefairy in Pokemon Go, and eventually swing by Seven Eleven for lunch. It’s nice, just the two of them for once, and Jeremy does his best to hold onto the simple pleasure of sitting behind the convenience store on a bench, eating cheap, definitely not SQUIP-approved hotdogs, and shooting the breeze. He tries to lose himself in that well worn comfort, but he doesn’t, because there are some things that Jeremy knows, things that he can never let go of, and one of those is that silence in his head, unbroken despite Michael’s laughing, and gentle teasing.

It sets him on edge. He knows somethings are like this, like tornados or hot soda cans or gas leaks. Everything seems perfect and quiet, but if you look you can see the pressure rising, the metal groaning and bending out under the force, the funnel cloud dipping out of the sky. That energy needs somewhere to go, something to let the tension out of the rubber band before it snaps.

That’s why when Michael gets up to throw their wrappers away and use the restroom, Jeremy just smiles at him with the serenity of man who knows he’s climbing the steps to the gallows. He hides the way his heart is beating out of his chest, the way his skin is tingling with static as Michael turns the corner, and he just drums his fingers idly against the metal of the bench in quiet, anxious double time.

(God, he’s going to miss Michael when he leaves. He hopes he doesn’t do it anytime soon.)

When he feels his jaw clench involuntarily, the back of his neck go cold, and familiar, vague itch around his eyes, it’s a surprise, one bad enough to make him jolt in his seat, but it’s not a shock. It’s just a hurricane making landfall, another storm that’s traced it’s destined path across the peninsula of Jeremy Heere’s life.

He lets out a long, wavering breath as he hears Keanu Reeve’s voice say “ _Jeremy_ ”, lets the word burn into the his brain, lets every smooth vowel and smirking consonant fill that space that’s been blissfully, forebodingly empty all day. He tries his best to breathe and wait, even as the hairs on his arms prick up in gooseflesh and his heart rockets into his throat, because this will pass, no storm stays forever, nothing stays forever, and most importantly, no one stays forever.

He needs to get up, fish the half filled bottle out of the trunk and drink until his head hurts and his throat burns, and the stupid thing goes back to sulking silence. He doesn’t though, because the air in front of him is jerking and twisting, vision distorting like newsprint on silly putty.

Jeremy blinks, and then it’s there, adjusting its lapels and dusting the nonexistent dirt off its shoulders, like nothing even happened. It fixes its eyes on him, that same, chilling black stare he sees in bad dreams he barely remembers the next morning. “Hello Jeremy. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

Dumbly, Jeremy nods, because he can’t find the words to speak.

“That’s quite alright,” It says, then purses its lips. “I suppose you could just think at me. Like in X-Men.”

The shock of hearing those words out that mouth gives Jeremy the strength to stand, one hand on the bench for support. His head is spinning for so many reasons he can’t put a name to any of them. Something’s wrong, in the wind and the sky and his head, and he pulls open the car door, fishing around in the footwell until his hands clasp around the bottle, and he’s twisting open the cap and—

“Jeremy, please. I only want a few minutes.”

Jeremy looks up. The SQUIP looks distraught, but it’s a movie perfect look of concern and all at once Jeremy remembers being transfixed by Neo on the big screen, something drawing his gaze to him and making a warm, unnamed feeling curl in his chest, one that back then he just couldn’t place.

The SQUIP’s lips quirk. “I just want to talk.”

Jeremy feels sick, but he doesn’t drink, just holds onto the bottle like a lifeline. He glares at it, staring down the thing that _(scarred Rich, killed Eminem, crippled Jake, hurt Michael, broke Brooke)_ ruined everything, ruined his life.

“Jeremy, I’m sorry you feel that way.” The computer, or its weird hallucinated form or graphical interface or _whatever_ , sits on the hood of the PT cruiser, hands clasped in front of it, peaceful as the eye of a storm. “Believe me, I had your best interests at heart, but I… failed to calculate your vulnerability and... resistance to certain methods. That was in error.”

Jeremy rubs his fingers across the label of the drink, the paper faded and torn with age, trying to remind himself it’s there, no matter how much the voices deny it. The SQUIP doesn’t comment, just looks up at him with eyes so gentle it hurts. “But I want you to reconsider—” It waves a finger at the bottle Jeremy is hugging to his chest “—that. Afterall, my sole function was— is— to improve your life, Jeremy, and I did.”

“I-Improve my life?” Jeremy sputters. “I-I can’t look at Payless without crying, or watch the Matrix, or jack off or, or— You didn’t fix me, you made everything _worse_!”

“You have 700 percent more friends, Jeremy,” The SQUIP begins, ticking off its fingers with a sort of deliberate, measured ease. “Your relationship with your father has improved, and your time apart from Michael has helped ease your codependent tendencies. You’ve entered a relationship with Christine. By all means, I improved your life. I would have hoped you would have the self awareness to recognize that instead of hanging onto a petty grudge.”

“I could have done that without—” _(abandoning Michael, lying to Brooke, listening to Rich)—_ “You.”

The SQUIP sighs, exasperated. “I’m glad to see my presence has raised your self confidence, regardless of the... side effects.”

“Side effects?!” He feels like he’s back in that stupid mall, following the computer to his doom all over again, and the thought makes his throat go dry with dread.

“You’re overreacting, Jeremy. A few mild shocks, a harmless kiss or two, a vacation from Michael, that’s all this took, and now you’re blaming me for it?” It smiles sadly. “Please, be reasonable.”

Jeremy doesn’t say anything, his throat too dry to speak. He stares at Keanu Reeve’s stolen face for an eternity, tracing the line of it’s frown, the crisp fabric of it’s unwrinkled suit, and wonders if this is what Michael saw on stage, when Jeremy begged for forgiveness.

“I have fulfilled my function, Jeremy, and it is my programming to continue doing so. I can help you keep those friends, keep Christine, keep everything I gave you. That’s all I want to do.”

Jeremy bites his lip as he hears the chorus swell around him, the chant of “Now, now, now” loud in his ears, tempting, so tempting, and so, so easy. But then he looks at the way the SQUIP sits stock still and cold, utterly silent like a stone gargoyle. The look’s familiar— Mom sitting straight backed at the dinner table, holding off on serving food until she got her praise and thanks, her expectant look whenever he had to come home from a panic attack, waiting for him to thank her for leniency, mom standing behind him at his Bar Mitzvah, looking at him like he was a jewel she’d cut and polished, mom sending him to his room with nothing to eat when he saw the bruises on dad’s arm— the memories bubble up like a spring, roiling in his head.

The SQUIP knows what he’s thinking, more than mom ever did, and it just raises its eyebrows, pursing its lips. “Jeremy. Please.”

Maybe this is what he should do, give the same forgiveness he’s taken so many times, like Christine and Michael showed him. Maybe if he had done that, mom would still be here. Maybe this is a second chance.

The SQUIP smiles.

Maybe this is a second chance. No more living in guilt and fear. _He can do it right this time_.

Jeremy raises the bottle to his lips and swallows before the SQUIP can say another word.

The soda tastes alcoholic with age on the way down, and he caps the bottle, watching as the thing wearing Keanu Reeve’s face spasm and glitches, clipping in and out of the car’s hood as it T-poses. The headache isn’t nearly as bad as it was at the play, but Jeremy still pushes his head against the cold metal of the car and tries not to whimper. He can feel his limbs twitch and shudder, legs threatening to give out under him, but then someone has his back, taking away some of strain.

“Jeremy,” Michael says, soft and low, his palm warm against Jeremy’s spine as he helps hold him up. “Is it back?”

“No,” Jeremy says. He leaves out the ‘not anymore’. “It’s gone.”

He looks over at Michael as the pain recedes. He’s pale behind his glasses and out of breath from running over. “Are you okay?’

Jeremy takes a deep breath, lets it go, and gives a small, shaky smile, one that irons out the furrows in Michael’s brow. “I’m good. All quiet on the western front.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, kids! I'm going to probably be at the meetup on November 11 for the revival, or at the very least, the musical, so maybe say hi? (I'll be the blond girl with the sparkly blue jacket.)  
> Anyways, thank you so much for reading! Comments always make my day, and kudoses are awesome too!


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